Cricket Namibia and Stadio Higher Education on Wednesday signed an agreement aimed at advancing education, athlete development, and lifelong learning opportunities within Namibia’s cricket community.
Stadio Higher Education Namibia head of campus Brighten Simasiku says the agreement formalises a relationship that seeks to create meaningful pathways for student-athletes and strengthen the connection between education and sport in Namibia.
“This partnership will foster a strong synergy by combining Stadio’s flexible distance learning with Cricket Namibia’s focus on employee and athlete development,” he says.
“Cricket Namibia is well-placed to adopt Stadio’s distance learning tools, providing thorough development opportunities and enabling athletes to earn qualifications without disrupting their training schedules. This partnership will strengthen the two institutions by improving data collection and evidence-building capabilities, broadening Stadio’s qualifications, and addressing gaps in sport management,” he adds.
“The collaboration/partnership between Stadio Namibia and Cricket Namibia will advance cricket development beyond the cricket field. This has been proven globally, where supporting elite athletes’ transitions to leadership roles as coaches, administrators, and scholars offers insights valuable for developing similar international partnerships,” he says.
The partnership uses Stadio’s distance education platform across its eight schools, including commerce, law, education, information technology, administration and management, engineering and architecture, policing and law enforcement, fashion, art and design, to develop customised learning pathways for cricket players, coaches, administrators, and staff.
Cricket Namibia chief executive Johan Muller says they want to empower their staff to pursue their careers further.
“It’s not often that a sport announces a learning partner, and it speaks so much to our vision of Cricket Namibia, where we want to build the capacity of all our people. Everything you see here at the stadium was built by Namibians for Namibians. We believe in building the capacity and developing our staff and our players to not just be good cricketers or good sport administrators, but to pursue careers far further,” he says.
“It really speaks to our passion for people and it speaks to our passion for the country and uplifting people throughout the development phase. No better partner can be found in Namibia than Stadio. If you just go into their website you will see the diversity of courses that they offer, how it integrates into the Namibian landscape, and how it speaks uniquely to the need that we have in this country regarding people development,” he adds.
Muller says the partnership originated when Stadio became a franchise owner of one of Cricket Namibia’s junior cricket teams, and that it had developed to the point where they are now a learning partner for their staff and players.
“We believe that our players will migrate out of cricket when the age comes for them to do that, and we want to send them into the world with decent and applied qualifications that will aid them in building their out-of-cricket careers even further. We really want to thank Stadio for this partnership, so that we can integrate not just on a sport level, but also an academic level and enrich the lives of people for future development,” he says.
Simasiku did not divulge too much of the agreement but confirmed that Cricket Namibia staff will receive discounted rates for their courses.
“Yes, there will be some discounted rates for the staff, the players, and everyone at Cricket Namibia. The parameters as to whom, that is defined separately. For example, not the third cousin or the second cousin will benefit, but there is a particular parameter that is well explained,” he says.
“There will be a wide range of activities that will be done, for example, there will be promotional formal and short learning programmes (SLPs), for example, short courses and formal programmes. The staff, administrators, the players will be eligible to attend those at discounted rates at Stadio Namibia. This will run from our SLPs up to our doctorate programmes,” he adds.
Simasiku says they envisioned closer collaboration while new courses could also develop through the partnership.
“We do not see this as something to be confined to just going to the classroom, but we can even end up developing courses together.
“We could franchise with their universities and then Cricket Namibia and Stadio Namibia can develop curricula that respond to the needs of Cricket Namibia,” he says.
